Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions - involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery - made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.

Some of the cases involve people who are suspected of having mailed tens of thousands of dollars to themselves from Iraq, or of having stuffed the money into duffel bags and suitcases when leaving the country, the federal investigators said. In other cases, millions of dollars were moved through wire transfers. Suspects then used cash to buy BMWs, Humvees and expensive jewelry, or to pay off enormous casino debts.

Some suspects also tried to conceal foreign bank accounts in Ghana, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain, the investigators said, while in other cases, cash was simply found stacked in home safes.

There have already been dozens of indictments and convictions for corruption since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the new cases seem to confirm what investigators have long speculated: that the chaos, weak oversight and wide use of cash payments in the reconstruction program in Iraq allowed many more Americans who took bribes or stole money to get off scot-free.

But by all means, let's focus instead on ACORN, which helps some 400,000 low-income families in 75 cities with basic needs, because they've received an average of $3.5 million in federal dollars to help with their efforts for each of the last 15 years.

That's "million" (with an m), as opposed to the "billions" as still misreported by James O'Keefe and the other journalistic malpracticers at "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Government." Six months ago, in a still-uncorrected item at Breitbart's website --- their first one on the phony ACORN "pimp" hoax videos --- O'Keefe mis-reported that ACORN "receive[s] billions in tax money."

Oh, and in addition to the actual billions (with a b) that we may have been defrauded of via phony contracts in Iraq during the Bush regime, the same story linked above also notes:

A related investigation of rebuilding funds for Afghanistan began in February.

Now let's go do our moral duty and protect the tax-payers against "big government" corruption by taking down those those bastards at ACORN!

Yeah! ACORN is *way* more important than that! Heck that is nothing compared to that nefarious, awful, terrible, stinky ACORN! ACORN! ACORN! Ad nauseum... Who cares if they were (literally) hurtling out duffel-bags full of cash? Isn't that how everybody gets paid?

One Republican war profiteer can probably get more tax-payer cash into one duffel bag than ACORN's ever received in an entire year. Hmm... Might make for a good talking point. God knows we need some good talking points.

Here's some more possible corruption that could be huge, notice Hannity has the word "Freedom" in his charity (lol):

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity is routinely mocked by the left for his conservative positions, but now he has become the target of far more serious accusations from a fellow-conservative.

Columnist and blogger Debbie Schlussel claimed on Friday that Hannity is profiting from a charity that raises money for severely injured US soldiers and the children of troops killed in action, and she described the Freedom Alliance as "a huge scam."

"Less than 20% --- and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively --- of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferret [sic] the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style," Schlussel writes.

"And, despite Hannity’s statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show," she continues, "few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes."

Schlussel cites an anonymous source who she says told her that the promoter of Hannity's fundraising "Freedom Concerts" figured the cost of a Gulfstream jet, a "fleet" of luxury SUVs, and high-end hotel suites for Hannity's entourage as amounting to over $200,000 per event.

Of course Breitbart "missed this one"!!! He thinks people are stupid and won't notice. Like all those people do. Like we don't notice the GOP set records for using Reconciliation, then cry about it, and I can go on and on and on. That's what they are all about. They're hypocrites. They know it, they're just trying to hide it. Actually, Breitbart purposely misses things like this. That's his job. That's why people like him can't be taken seriously. He's not a serious "journalist", he's a shill with a cause and agenda with zero integrity. The entire FOX "news" network does this, that is why they can't be taken seriously.

Republicans also don’t care when their own rank hypocrisy is revealed in the “liberal media” — when there are balanced reports, for example, that they used the same arcane rules with wild abandon when they controlled Congress. The Republican base will never learn about their own pols’ hypocrisy because these voters have been trained to get their “news” exclusively from right-wing propaganda outlets like Fox News and hate radio, where untidy facts like these will never be mentioned.

That is the point of the noise machine: smoke. It not only poisons funding for ACORN, it uses up airtime and attention. Bonus: it feeds into all sorts of wackaloon memes about the nation's first black president.

NY Times is still at it, in the article on ACORNS impending bankruptcy they state that O'Keefe posed a a pimp once again even though they have to know by now he posed as the girls friend hoping to rescue her from the "ficticious " pimp. Is any progress being made as far as prosecuting them for illegal taping w/o consent?

And how much do you want to bet that most, if not all, of the people stuffing U.S. taxpayer-provided money into duffel bags were Republicans, who rushed to the war zones to make their fortune, part of which they'd funnel back into the coffers of the Republican Party as repayment to the Bush/Cheney administration and the neo-cons for making their war-profiteering possible.

Kind of like what happened after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, after which the criminal Bush/Cheney administration directed most, if not all, taxpayer-provided reconstruction funds to Republican companies and individuals.

Kind of like fourth-rate Republican lawyers at the DOJ, Goodling and Sampson, scrapping the Hatch Act so they could hire only right-wing litmus-passing Republicans to DOJ positions with a clear conscience...which is strange because for a criminal Republican to have a clear conscience they must first have a conscience.

@Jim, #10&#11, welcome to Bradblog. You've been watching WAY TO MUCH Faux News. Request you back away from your keybaord & actually read the sources of Brad's reporting. Take some Xanax, though, as your world view could be destroyed.

Your thoughts & evidence are welcome here, but namecalling and blather generally result in a quick rebuttal. We're used to uneducated people on this blog, but we don't ignore them much.

P.S. Jim: why aren't you frothing at the mouth over the stolen BILLIONS accomplished during the Bush Administration? Yes, the Dems are corrupt-DUH! But the scale is simply ludicrously small compared to the 'accomplshments' of the Rethuglican regime. We're talking thimble vs ocean. And every time a Rethuglican president gets into office, the country disintegrates financially. Would you PLEASE read a book now and again? I know you think it's all a 'liberal media lie' but I'ma tellin' ya, you've been lied to so much, you can't recognize an accurate fact any more. (How do I know this? I've been listening to the right wing smoke machine for 10 years, and their falsities have been exposed by responsible journalists (yes-there are a few left!) over and over. After a while, the echo chamber just SMELLS.)

We must not forget about the $2.3 TRILLION that the pentagon lost (originally reported by Donald Rumsfeld as about $1.3 Trillion) on (can you guess the date?) if you guessed 09-10-2001 then you get to wear a star on your forehead for the day! http://tinyurl.com/ycz7w4y

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him.

Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork. One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag.